1. Meals consisted of three basic food groups: fruit, fish and unidentifiable goo.
2. You loved your Soviet toys, especially the ones that awkwardly shuffled over slanted surfaces.
Which, coincidentally, all of your floors were.
3. And you understood the deep philosophical significance of Soviet cartoons.
And learned to use the same quotes your parents incorporated into every conversation.
4. Your first American apartment resembled a jungle.
5. For your parents, freedom tasted like citrus fruits.
6. And Costco was THE PROMISED LAND.
7. You had to help your parents when they asked to buy "clean shits" or "go to the bitch."
8. Your mother convinced you that sitting on cold stoops would render you infertile.
9. And that if you sat in front of a draft or didn't wear your house slippers you would swiftly get pneumonia and die.
10. Getting dressed for school in the winter was like preparing to launch into Outer Space.
11. You still make a distinction between "home clothing" and "outdoor clothing."
12. Doctors, especially psychiatrists, were considered charlatans.
13. So if you did get sick, DIY flu remedies included standing over a pot of boiling potatoes...
Eating raw cloves of garlic.
And, most dreaded of all, placing heated glass vessels onto your back.
14. The holidays were a confusing time for everyone.
15. You spent your summers in camps where your assignment was to inhale enough fresh air to last you all year.
16. Fur was not a luxury.
17. But plastic bags most definitely were.
18. Plastic jars were also reused, so that what might appear to be eye makeup remover could painfully turn out to be Listerine.
19. Your parents regarded vegetarianism as some sort of cult.
And if you decided to go vegetarian, meat would mysteriously appear in places meat did not belong.
20. As a boy, your career destiny was computer programming, and as a girl, it was nursing.
21. As a girl, if you weren't at least in a serious relationship by your early 20s it was like:
22. But then if you said you wanted to move in with your boyfriend it was like:
23. You have a rich, wacky cultural background that you wouldn't trade for anything!
